FRED MANTEGHIAN BLOG

I'm a jaded reviewer who thinks there are only two kinds of people in the world. The first group have the latest flat panel / front projector rigs with HDMI everything, 1080p, ba-blah-ba-blah-ba-blah, and the rest of the world watch TV on the same set Ricky Ricardo used to watch in "I Love Lucy." So imagine my surprise when I got an irate letter from a reader who had read my review of the Rotel RSP-1069 pre/pro in Home Theater magazine where I said, incorrectly, that the Rotel would internally convert HDMI sources to component, all the way up to 1080i. I mean, who would need to do that anyway? Well, he did for one, since his perfectly-good-otherwise widescreen RPTV lacked HDMI (or DVI) inputs. I apologized in print, but that's not the point. I, Fred Manteghian, had discovered a new species!

Copyright concerns prevent high def players or pre/pros from converting high definition digital signals into anything higher than 480p in analog. But a company only reachable via the internet, HDFURY, has a solution, a widget if you will, that accepts a 1080p or 720p HDMI signal and give you a wide range of analog resolutions up to a full 1080p in glorious analog RGB or component video output. Their solution will even work with CRT projectors which use RGB and a horizontal and vertical synch signal (five BNC connections usually).

As for audio, things aren't quite as cheery in this department. The Fury2 has an output connector that provides both a two-channel analog output (if you're also an Audislowdoptus) and an optical output as well, but it only provides the same two-channel output as the analog outputs. So kick in the Dolby Pro Logic IIx processing, that's the best you can hope for.

I haven't tried the Fury2, but a friend has, and he said it works as advertised. The price is high, but still not high enough to justify a new TV if you're perfectly happy with your old one but want to start watching some Blu-ray. Personally, I'd use the money as a down-payment on a new set, but then again, I'm in that first group.